There have been many changes in my lifetime in how people with disabilities are treated. And yet, we have not arrived where I want to be. For example, I can pretty much count on any house I want to visit being inaccessible—unless someone with a disability lives there and has expended enormous efforts and money to make it accessible.In the early 1990s, I consciously sat down to write a poem trying to express my feelings about disability culture and why it was so important to me. I wrote a poem that—over 2 decades later—I am immensely happy to have created. It’s called simply “Tell Your Story,” and to me the most important stanza has always been:“The lessons are in the tellingthey provide a framework and a dwelling.We all have so many stories to bearCry, laugh, sing, and despair;how will our children learn and compareif we're too timid to dareto raise the flareshare that we care.”(Entire poem at: http://www.instituteondisabilityculture.org/examples-of-our-disability-culture-3-of-steves-poems.html)At the time I wrote those lines my daughter was about 12 or 13. Now she has kids. And I am hopeful that someday they will understand why I needed to write those lines, how things have changed—and how they haven’t.All of these feelings led me to share my poem, “WHERE IS…?” which both acknowledges some of our historic leaders and their achievements and continues to ask questions about what we still (and I say this in 2015, just as I did in the mid-1990s) need.

WHERE IS...?

Where is our Malcolm, I heard them say,Over and over again, two or three years ago,When Spike Lee and Denzel Washington made Malcolm Xcome alive once more;Where is our Malcolm, I heard them say, Over and over again, two or three years ago, When Spike Lee and Elijah Muhammad destroyed and martyred Malcolm once more,Where is our Malcolm, my sisters and brothers wrote, Over and over again, two or three years ago, Bemoaning our missing Malcolm, Apparently forgetting the Heroics of The Man Led also to the Annihilation of The Man,And apparently forgetting also, The Incarceration, Annihilation, mostly silent martyrdom of our brothers sisters Across the land,In nursing homes and out, Supported by the morals And the Courts OF OUR TIMESAs we struggleTO FEED OURSELVES TO CLOTHE OURSELVES TO HOUSE OURSELVES TO MOVE OURSELVES TO IMPROVE OURSELVES TO SUPPORT OURSELVES TO BE OURSELVESWhere is our Martin, I hear over and over again, From my brothers and sisters, Forgetting about Judy and Ed, Lex and Justin, Marca and Denise, Where is our Martin, I hear over and over again, Forgetting that even Martin was not merely Martin, He, too, was Stokely and Meredith and Eldridge and the Evers and the Panthers and the Christians and the Muslims; Martin was the Power, Martin was even Malcolm, Martin was X We all were Some of us still are.Where is our James Baldwin, our Richard Wright, our Ralph Ellison, our Maya Angelou, our Toni Morrison, I ask myself over and over again, Not remembering, often enough, Irving Kenneth Zola, Anne Finger, Lorenzo Milam, Jean Stewart, Hugh Gregory Gallagher, Kathi Wolfe, Paul Longmore, and so many other resilient voices, including, I'd like to think, myself.When will...We eliminate...Where is...From our vocabulary...And replace it with...We have...We have...WE HAVE...WE HAVE!!!from Steven E. Brown, Voyages: Life Journeys (Institute on Disability Culture, copyright 1996, All Rights Reserved).